South Africa

Sharon and I en route to Cape Point

Dave and I at the southern most tip of Africa

Me, not too thrilled to be inside the shark cage

South Africa was a really fantastic trip ! Sharon and I spent a week together in Capetown. We climbed up Table Mountain, visited Robben’s Island where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned and toured the cape peninsula. Then Dave came to meet us and we went wine-tasting and then drove along the southern, “garden route.” There was a shark diving expedition...

We ended up at a game reserve which was definitely the best part of the trip. It was a really cool place that is doing a lot to protect endangered animals. For example, I didn’t know until this trip that 2 rhinos are killed every day for their horns. Some poachers even use helicopters to swoop in and cut the horns off while the animal is tranquilized, then it wakes up and basically bleeds to death. So the reserve has put all sorts of measures in place to protect the rhinos. We did see the rhinos and some baby rhinos too which was really cool. We also saw lions. With the lions we got really lucky because there was some sort of pride war going on so they were all staking out their territory and these great rangers and trackers would just wander into the bush and then next thing you know, there’d be a lion. My favorite animal was the elephant. They wouldn’t seem to be bothered at all by our car, and then it would decide we were too close and start marching towards us, just enough to make the car back off so he knew he was the top guy. It’s hard to imagine that all these animals are so dangerous since they seemed so peaceful. But the lodge wasn’t fenced off or anything so you had to be escorted from your room to the lodge in case something wandered over in our direction. The only mysterious night animal viewing we had though was an alleged kudu spotting seen only by David…. Conveniently the very same night we had kudu for dinner… coincidence?

The other animals we saw were buffalo, zebra, giraffes, cheetah… although the leopard remained elusive.

I could probably write another page about how much I enjoyed the food there but I’ll save that to make my Peace Corps friends jealous. Everything was sooooo delicious though.

A HUGE thank you to Sharon and David for flying halfway across the world & taking me on such a fabulous vacation, you guys are the best!!